George Mason University celebrates their 2006 Final Four berth. / H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY Sports

by Chris Mahr, Special for USA TODAY Sports

by Chris Mahr, Special for USA TODAY Sports

This year's Final Four features a very unlikely Wichita State team that has turned heads and busted brackets. The fine folks at Lost Lettermen take a look at the most surprising teams to ever reach the Final Four ...

10. 2000 North Carolina (No. 8 Seed)

In Bill Guthridge's third season as the Tar Heels' head coach, his team was on the verge of implosion after a first round exit in 1999 to Weber State and a 13-loss regular season that made the Heels feel lucky to draw a No. 8 seed in the 2000 Big Dance.

But a talented Carolina team featuring the likes of Joe Forte, Brendan Haywood and Ed Cota woke up come tourney time, knocking off No. 1 seed Stanford in the second round and surviving Tennessee and Tulsa to reach the Final Four in Indianapolis.

9. 2000 Wisconsin (No. 8 Seed)

There was an extra dose of Madness in March 2000, with Wisconsin joining North Carolina as a second No. 8 seed in the Final Four. Like UNC, the Badgers had lost 13 games entering the tournament. They were just .500 in Big Ten play and had lost to South Florida and Northern Illinois in the regular season.

But Dick Bennett's tenacious defense stunned top-seed Arizona in the second round, LSU in the Sweet Sixteen and Purdue in the Elite Eight, as none of them scored over 60 points. That run ended in the Final Four against Michigan State, where Wisconsin's defense wasn't enough to make up for a lackluster offense in a 53â??41 loss.

8. 1984 Virginia (No. 7 Seed)

Virginia was a college basketball power during the early 1980s but was expected to struggle in 1983â??1984 - its first season of the post-Ralph Sampson Era.

And struggle the Cavaliers did. UVA entered the '84 Big Dance with 11 losses (they had just nine the previous two seasonscombined) and a 6-8 ACC record. In a field of just 53 teams, the No. 7 seed was especially low.

Virginia just kept finding ways to win in the tournament. A one-point victory over Iona in the first round, an overtime win over second-seeded Arkansas in the second and a late steal and basket to defeat Indiana, 50-48, in the Elite Eight.

Ironically, after boasting the sport's most dominant player the previous four seasons, the Cavaliers reached the Final Four after coming up short the previous two years.

7. 1985 Villanova (No. 8 Seed)

The lowest seed to win the NCAA title, the Wildcats' run to the Final Four was almost as remarkable as winning it all. 'Nova entered the Big Dance having lost five of its last nine, was eliminated in the Big East tournament after a 15-point loss to St. John's and had a pedestrian 19-10 record.

Somehow that failed to prevent Villanova from victimizing blue bloods Michigan, Maryland and North Carolina en route to the Final Four. (The 56-44 victory over a UNC team boasting Kenny Smith and Brad Dougherty was especially jaw-dropping.) Two games later, a Georgetown squad with Patrick Ewing would suffer the same fate.

However, despite what people will have you believe now, the Wildcats weren't exactly chopped liver; 'Nova had reached the Elite Eight in both 1982 and '83.

6. 1986 LSU (No. 11 Seed)

While LSU is tied for the lowest seed to ever reach the Final Four, their run in '86 wasn't as shocking as the seeding would suggest. After all, coach Dale Brown had led the Tigers there just five years earlier and the Bayou Bengals played their first two tourney games on their home court in Baton Rouge.

Still, no one could have foreseen a team that was just 9â??9 in SEC play downing the likes of Purdue, Memphis, Georgia Tech and Kentucky. Yet due in large part to Brown's "Freak Defense," that's exactly what happened.

To this day, the Tigers remain the only team to defeat the top three seeds in their region en route to the Final Four.

5. 2011 Butler (No. 8 Seed)

Butler had reached the Final Four the year before as a No. 5 seed, so the Bulldogs' run wasn't completely out of the blue. But without Gordon Hayward - the star of the 2010 team had moved on to the NBA after his sophomore season - the team struggled, going a pedestrian (by its standards) 13-5 in the Horizon League and suffering losses to the likes of Evansville and Youngstown State.

But once the tournament started, Butler regained its mojo - starting with last-second wins over Old Dominion and No. 1 seed Pitt. Following a triumphant slugfest over Wisconsin in the Sweet Sixteen and a dramatic, come-from-behind victory over Florida in the Elite Eight, Brad Stevens had done the impossible: Lead Butler to two straight Final Fours and, eventually, two straight national title games.

4. 1979 Penn (No. 9 Seed)

Unless a guy named Bill Bradley is on your team, Ivy League squads are never supposed to reach the Final Four. The Quakers had the second best thing: Tony Price.

On a day known as "Black Sunday" in North Carolina, Price led the Quakers over the mighty Tar Heels in the second round, 72â??71 - in Raleigh, no less - with a 25-point, nine-rebound performance. The New York City native then spearheaded victories over Syracuse and St. John's, allowing Penn to join Larry Bird and Magic Johnson in the 1979 Final Four.

Despite the identical seeding, Penn's Final Four run was less surprising than Wichita State's this year, seeing as the Quakers had almost beaten Duke in the Sweet Sixteen the year before.

3. 2013 Wichita State (No. 9)

Be honest, how many of you even had Wichita State winning its Round of 64 game?

A Top 25 team for parts of the year, the Shockers' late-season slump (three losses in the final five games entering the tourney) didn't inspire a lot of confidence. Nor did its Round of 64 defeat the year before, when it was a No. 5 seed and, by all accounts, a better team.

But to everyone's surprise, the Shockers crushed Pitt in the Round of 64, put the clamps on top-ranked Gonzaga in the Round of 32 and routed fellow upstart La Salle in the Sweet Sixteen.

Against heavily-favored and battle-tested Ohio State in the Elite Eight, the Shockers had a 20-point lead in the second half before holding on for a 70â??66 win - becoming the first Missouri Valley Conference team since Larry Bird's 1979 Indiana State squad to reach the Final Four.

2. 2011 VCU (No. 11 Seed)

A chorus of criticisms rained down on the Rams after they were selected as an at-large team with a 23â??11 record. Chief among them was ESPN's Jay Bilas, who memorably stated, "We talk about the eye test, this one fails the laugh test."

No one was laughing, however, as VCU marched all the way to the Final Four in Houston in a story that felt very familiar from five years before. Making it all the more impressive is that VCU had to win a First Four game against USC prior to beating blue bloods Georgetown, Purdue and Kansas in addition to a heart-stopping OT win over Florida State in the Sweet Sixteen.

Of the five tournament victories VCU enjoyed that March, only the one over the Seminoles was by fewer than eight points. Yup, the Rams deserved to be there after all.

1. 2006 George Mason (No. 11 Seed)

George Mason's at-large berth - like VCU's five years later - was a contentious one. But unlike the Rams, who had done damage in the tourney prior to 2011, George Mason had never won a game in the Big Dance and was making just its fourth appearance ever.

That made GMU's defeats of a Murderer's Row of opponents that much more unlikely. There was Michigan State, a Final Four team the year before, in the first round; defending champ North Carolina in the second round; fellow upstart Wichita State in the Sweet Sixteen; and UConn - a team that many had predicted would cut down the nets - in the Elite Eight.

Verne Lundquist's cry of "By George, the dream is alive!" after Mason had downed the Huskies in overtime is one that will be seen and heard on March Madness highlight shows until the end of time and a fitting culmination of the most shocking Final Four run in tournament history.